Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

For Too Many, It's a Very Unhappy Fourth of July

By Alan
Caruba

As
Americans pause to celebrate the 238th signing of the Declaration of
Independence in 1776, it well may be one of the saddest Fourth’s in decades.
The six and a half years of the Obama regime has failed to unleash the nation’s
capacity to recover from the 2008 financial crisis and has left the nation
saddled in debt and dependency.

This is
not what freedom is about, nor did the Founding Fathers conceive of a President
who ruled with “a pen and a phone.”

As The
Wall Street Journal reported on January 13, “The year began with the news that
“World economic freedom has reached record levels according to the 2014 Index
of Economic Freedom released Tuesday by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall
Street Journal. But after seven straight years of decline, the U.S. has dropped
out of the top ten most economically free countries.” What this means is that
“those losing freedom risk economic stagnation, high unemployment, and
deteriorating social conditions.”

That is a
description of life in America today. It is a nation in which regard for
Congress and the mainstream media has plunged to new lows.

In
February, CNSnews reported that “The debt of the U.S. government has increased
$6,666 trillion since President Barack Obama took office on January 20, 2009,
according to the latest numbers release by the Treasury Department.” When he
was first inaugurated, the debt was $10,626,877,913.08 and as of January 31,
2014 the debt was $17,293,019,654,983.61.” Looking back in time, the total debt
of the U.S. did not exceed $6,666 trillion until July 2003, meaning that the
U.S. has accumulated as much debt as it did in its first 227 years.

As the
year began, the unemployment figures cited by the government were in dispute.
One influential Wall Street advisor, David John Marotta, calculated that those
not working when the year began represented 37.2% of the labor force as defined
by the portion of people who did not have a job, had given up looking for one,
and those who had no intention of working for a living. The government
calculated the unemployment rate at 6.7%.

Being a
native-born American offered no advantage for those seeking work. The Center for Immigration Studies released a study that said that “Since the year 2000
all of the net increase in the number of working-age (16-65) people holding a
job has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal)” even though native-born
Americans accounted to two-thirds of the growth in the total working-age
population.

Since 2000
more than 17 million immigrants arrived in the country, a time period in which
native employment “has deteriorated significantly.” Given the wholesale
invasion of illegal immigrants that is occurring, this calls for the
enforcement of existing immigration laws and a secure southern border.

Since
Obama took office, all manner of government benefit programs have been
expanded. They include Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income,
public housing, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Woman, Infants
Children. In the fourth quarter of 2011, the Census Bureau calculated that
there were 109,592,000 who lived in a household that included people “on one or
more means-tested programs.”

Contrast
that with 86,429,000 full-time private sector workers and it means that
14,802,00 non-veteran benefit takers outnumbered those whose taxes support them
by a rate of 1.7 to 1.

There are
more Americans, 10,982,920, receiving disability benefits than the individual
populations of Greece, Portugal, Tunisia, and Burundi. November 2013 was the
202nd straight month that the number of disabled workers in the
United States increased.

We live in
a welfare state in which the federal government funds 126 separate programs
targeted toward low-income people, 72 of which provide either cash or in-kind
benefits to individuals. The Cato Institute said that “Congress and state
legislatures should consider strengthening work requirements in welfare
programs, removing exemptions, and narrowing the definition of work.”Keep in mind that welfare benefits are not
taxed while wages are.

This is
not to say that people on welfare are lazy. Surveys consistently demonstrate
their desire for a job. The reality in America on the Fourth of July 2014 is
that jobs do not exist and the cause is Big Government and policies that thwart
the creation of new businesses and add costs to those that do. In America,
corporations are taxed at a rate higher than most other nations.

Over
recent years, the U.S. government has given our taxpayer money to a long list
of other nations and even to terrorist organizations such as Hamas, a
Palestinian non-state entity, which annually receives $440 million. Others
include Mexico which has received $662 million, Kenya which received $816
million, and Nigeria which received $816 million. Pakistan has received $2
billion and Iraq which received $1.08 billion.

As the
Fourth of July arrives, we have learned that American veterans are dying for lack of care by the Veterans Administration, conservative groups seeking
non-profit status have been targeted by the Internal Revenue Service, and Obama
immigration policies have deliberately triggered a wholesale invasion by
illegal aliens. We have witnessed the failures associated with the introduction
of Obamacare and are learning that it is filled with taxes while destroying
what was regarded as the best healthcare system in the world.

As of late
June, Gallup polls put the disapproval of the President at 52%. Confidence in
the President was only 29% while Congress received only 7%.

It is not
a happy Fourth of July in America and far too many Americans—nearly half—still believe
the President is doing a good job despite ample evidence that his
“transformation” of America has harmed the nation in countless ways.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.